The IT Exit Strategy

Kym McNicholas
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Research firm Gartner provides analysis on all areas of technology. Forbes caught up recently with Gartner CIO Darko Hrelic, who talked about what "exit strategy" means in IT.

Forbes: What's the word or phrase that is your pet peeve, or the most misinterpreted or misunderstood in the world of IT?

Darko Hrelic: Exit strategy. Most people in IT just do not think about exit strategy. You know, entering or starting in any application or project or even a business, and thinking about, "OK, where's this going? And how do you shut it down? Or do you shut it down?" And it just seems such a negative thing to say, "Oh, why should I think about an exit strategy?"

We think about that in anything else in life. When do you go to the top of the ski slope without any idea of where we're going to stop and how? Or in the car and "How are we going to stop this car?" We always, think about both ends of it. Yet in IT, it's nonexistent. We don't say, "What if this doesn't work?"

We need a strategy for how we enter and then how we potentially might exit that application, that market, that system.

For example, the implementation of Windows 7. You know how they're going to roll it out, but what if there are problems down the road? Or what if a new version comes out? What happens then?

Oh, exactly. If something goes drastically wrong and all of a sudden your internal applications don't work and your people stop being productive.

But at some point you may want to sort of step back and say, "Well, should we even go down that path at all?" Vista is a good example where a lot of companies did, in fact, do that. They were hesitant about jumping onto Vista because they just saw too many things that they didn't understand and were concerned about them.

We all have applications in our enterprises that have been around for many, many years. And they are just so, so difficult to get rid of. And often, they came in as quick-and-dirties, "Oh, we're just going to do this real quick. And then we'll get rid of it or whatever." But nobody took ownership. There was never anything about, "OK, who's going to make sure that it is phased out or folded into some other application?"

And a whole bunch of resources and money is held back on trying to keep the old stuff going. And so, as a result, you either fund IT more, which is typically not the option, or the capability you provide is not as great, which is a problem.